Known good ethernet card under $20

[sporkman]

I'm gifting my old hackintosh to my wife. It works well, and is faster than her old Core2Duo hackintosh. It does have network problems that I never got around to solving: sometimes multicast just stops working (which essentially breaks file sharing and printing on the network), and more annoyingly, if a lot of data is uploaded, the machine eventually freezes up with warnings about some network queue overflowing. Reboot is the only recovery in that scenario.

This is using the built-in Realtek device and the linux2mac driver.

I'd like to throw another card in there, but don't want to run into the same realtek problems. Any affordable/tested Intel cards? Or any Realtek or other off-brand that you'd bet your life on?

 

[sporkman]

Well, I bought a batch of Intel cards from China. Will be trying the first one soon and will update this thread with model numbers and such. Then I suppose I'll be Ebay-ing the rest (had to buy 6).

 

[rockjano]

I am very-very interested... I also need a working cheap ethernet card suffering with what is on board...

 

[nobodynose]

Most ethernet cards under $20 are Realtek-based. Here are a couple of fairly inexpensive options - I haven't personally tested all of them (only the Rosewill RC-401-EX), but they have chipsets that should work:

• Rosewill RC-401-EX - $32.85 for a lot of 6 (eBay) - Marvell Yukon 88E805x chipset, works natively (I have one personally)
• Sonnet GE-1000LAB-E - $42.94 (Amazon) - Broadcom BCM57xx chipset, works natively
• Intel Gigabit CT EXPI9301CTBLK - $27.00 (Amazon) - Intel 82574L chipset, should work with AppleIntelE1000e kext from MultiBeast
• Ipolex Intel i210 - $16.88 (Amazon) - Intel i210 chipset, should work with AppleIGB kext from MultiBeast

Hope this helps.

 

[rockjano]

Thanks I bought a TP-LINK TG-3269 network card with Realtek 8169 chip and with the AppleRTL8169Ethernet-v2.0.6 driver/kext it does work. Costs less then $10.

Only problem is that I have El Captain installed and the Multibeast that comes with El Captain does not contain this specific driver and I could not use older Multibeasts (they just quit if I try to use them) So I took and older Multibeast and opened the program in finder - Show Package Content and just took out the driver from the resources folder, and just installed them and IT WORKS !!!!!! Halleluja

Strangely it did not started to work immediately but only after some restarts...

I also tried to use the onboard ethernet but it seemed to be a bit unreliable, whenever I tried to reach the Hackintosh from my iMac through the ethernet network it just restarted immediately.

It was OK from the other way around...

But with the card it just WORKS!!!! After lot's of struggle my Hackintos works perfectly, I am a happy man

rockjano

 

[thedocbwarren]

Where is that driver and does t work with Sierra?

Thanks I bought a TP-LINK TG-3269 network card with Realtek 8169 chip and with the AppleRTL8169Ethernet-v2.0.6 driver/kext it does work. Costs less then $10.

Only problem is that I have El Captain installed and the Multibeast that comes with El Captain does not contain this specific driver and I could not use older Multibeasts (they just quit if I try to use them) So I took and older Multibeast and opened the program in finder - Show Package Content and just took out the driver from the resources folder, and just installed them and IT WORKS !!!!!! Halleluja

Strangely it did not started to work immediately but only after some restarts...

I also tried to use the onboard ethernet but it seemed to be a bit unreliable, whenever I tried to reach the Hackintosh from my iMac through the ethernet network it just restarted immediately.

It was OK from the other way around...

But with the card it just WORKS!!!! After lot's of struggle my Hackintos works perfectly, I am a happy man

rockjano

 

[rockjano]

Where is that driver and does t work with Sierra?

Hi..it was a long time ago I had to change motherboard and the new one has an ethernet chip that works perfectly...so no problem any longer.

Thanks
rockjano